A new rule

I will not propose projects here. I strongly realized I didn’t believe in M1lk enough to follow through with it. I do believe in serious games in social communication but I am not going to to create something AND seek to build a a community at the same time. I won’t last.

After M1lk I began to work on a business plan that is also unfinished, I decided I was still a bit naive about the financial analysis portion. I started a kitchen wiki for sharing kitchen lore but found flaws in the system. I couldn’t see how to allow multiple subjective voices to participate in a wiki and still be identified without turning into a development project (which perhaps I will take on later). For instance I might want to add that combining sri racha and fresh chopped tomatoes is a good quick salsa but others may disagree. I abandoned that project too. I started looking at how to leverage my VBA programming experience and started to look at MS certification I could earn along the way if I finally got around to trying to understand .NET and learn about VSTA, which sounds like VBA meets .NET.

What kind of blog would that be if I just kept expressing my excitement about a project I felt might the one I could through to completion? At least watching machines was a serious effort. I spent a lot of time and some money trying to make progress in a new field (electronics) before I became too baffled to continue (those acursed op-amps!).

Well I did see a project through. I created a 52 page print zine about the post-apocalyptic genre called Aftermath. It continues the romanticism dialog I touched upon here in this blog two years ago.

So the new rule is the first news about a project comes at least after I have already begun work on it. You know scratch that. Its totally fine that I do all of my inner workings here.

The new rule is that there is no hard and fast rule.

M1lk is a proxy

It is a just a realm to explore social taxonomy. I never even got it rolling and have since abandoned it is as means to develop taxonomic ideas.

It was supposed to be a website for categorizing games. The process of categorizing games was going to be game-like unto itself and thus easier for adoption by gamers. That is the reason for choosing that genre.

It is a good premise in that regard. Perhaps it is still a good idea.

Unfortunately I am becoming swayed by newer ideas. The key will be what do I do once I begin developing.

I am putting together a NAS device (Network Attached Storage) to serve as my developmental web-server and FTP server. Initially I had thought of using my computer but decided to go with a more secure solution. I’m having problems setting up the virtual server on my WiFi router though. It is supposed to pass all HTTP requests and all FTP requests to my NAS device. This is not occurring.

At first I thought the problem was a NAT conflict (firewall technology) between my Zoom 5515 modem/router and my D-LINK DI-524 WiFi router. I traded the modem for a modem with NAT diasabled but I still had the same problem. Now I am reading in places that the DI-524 is giving owners problems. I can reflash the newest firmware or purchase a newer faster WiFi route; I hope that one of these solves the problem. However seeing that the DI-524 is no longer supported I am inclined to go new.

359,021 minutes later

I thought so. The WordPress clock is off. I posted this at 12:25pm PST not 7:25 pm. Anyway the point of this post is that whether or not my last post was at 4:43am, since then I had clearly accepted defeat.

It was difficult through the rest of the semester, and neophyte electronics, my friend, is a demanding hobby. I had all but given up on the idea of cultivating web hits by doing interesting projects with electronics by the time the year was over. In the beginning I was motivated by MAKE magazine’s apparent need for content as well a new genre, one that hadn’t yet surpassed me with my lack of resources, but ultimately I concluded that MAKE no longer has that need.

So If I “make” it’ll be purely personal. I still love my projects and new one’s resurface but student debt is mounting and I need to find income. If I get out of school without any prospects and an even bigger load of debt I will be forced to become a bitter homesteading hermit in the Alaskan tudra. Why do I worry so much?

On the plus side of the equation I tricked myself into writing short stories by taking an accredited class on short story writing. If I hadn’t done that, the prospect of writing wouldn’t have any more appeal to me than crazy hack electronicking. Considering my self awareness, actually, perhaps I’ll manage this poverty phantom yet! Then you might see more of me on more web hits about electronicking and even on MAKE. I think this time I would use a circuit program, a flavor of Spice. Maybe I can take another class on electronics.

Oh how my mind works! If my Spring Break hadn’t started I would even have posted here probably. How I struggle and seek to conform to the job market!

I may not be very serious about taking up electronics again in the near future but I’m clever. I am developing a community website that has artistic and inventive merit. I can do it because there is the prospect of earning money if I succeed. Unfortunately I can not go into too many details. I’m sorry. However it is called m1lk or m1lk.biz depending on how I choose to brand it.

Cultivating a community is pretty tough it seems but I have some secret weapons. I have some insights that the suits probably hadn’t considered. I have a plan to partner and share hits with a someone who has a good hit stream but needs help achieving his vision, I have a friends who has net-influence and gets top Google hits for his niche, I have a revenue source, or two, I have fun and I have the attitude. I think my odds are pretty even.

It’s again a learning curve. I have set up a website before but it was pretty simple. I have Apache 2.2 installed and running, I have MySQL and ‘mostly’ running but I am butting up a wall trying to invoke Drupal’s Install script, the next step for set up. I’m cheap that’s why I am trying to roll everything on my own but who’s laughing now? I have had to purchase a new wireless modem bridge to replace my dual modem/bridge and wireless router combo. I simply can’t get the modem to port 80 forward to my computer. I probably spent 8 months worth of what I would have spent just going with a host. I just had a bad experience with a host trying to get them to place a jar file somewhere once. It was ridiculous. Maybe I just want to buy fancy things.

I have a few things to publish here, short stories and the origin of “m1lk’. See you soon.

I promise!

Summer of “Incoming”

Honestly I can’t believe I haven’t posted since I had been forcibly humbled by a failing grade in my major subject. Since then I had my hours cut in half, I had been healing a achilles heel condition that has kept me from working out, my laptop died for good, I lost my mind to stress when my teenaged cousin was being preparing for a finger amputation from a fireworks attack, and then we received a large 6 month utility bill when I got home. Then more family started dying, with two so far from my father’s side. I am expecting two more on my mother’s side before long. It has been one crisis after another, and then there was my guilt-based lack of resilience (the punishment submission attitude), which through these ordeals I have since corrected.

One positive is that my cousin’s tragedy has put a lot of things in perspective. It helped me begin to cut through some moping that I had been habitually doing without having to revert to becoming one of those repressed sociopaths to do it. I’m not lying, I’ve lost a lot, but nothing that I don’t still have a chance at rescuing, like a finger. Mostly I’ve just lost time, money, patience, opportunities, and respect by being unable to break loose from myself from what was a threateningly chronic anxiety condition for almost two decades, perhaps for a decade too many. When all that is holding you back is psychological, well it looks bad on you which makes it worse but sometimes making it worse doesn’t make it any better, and that’s when they send in the Cognitive Behavior Therapists, to identify what is really at work here. Usually in the end a way of thinking you are not used to is required to see the bugaboo because all that you have been told and advised has not helped. I had finally been on a full time wellness campaign ever since I had been reduced to divorce meat a few years ago and so I have had the momentum behind me and on one of my own recent lying awake late at night in bed sessions I think I may have actually unraveled the origin of my anxiety trigger sans therapy. Believe it or not.

Anyway, about the device I’m making for your entertainment. It doesn’t work either. It is in fact almost completely unpredictable. I have basically I have to troubleshoot whether I am using an inductor incorrectly, or if I am using an op-amp incorrectly, or if I have a faulty part. Sometimes the LED lights up if I take the negative lead of the inductor out, or if I take them both out (essentially removing the inductor). Sometimes removing the inductor doesn’t do anything. Mostly the op-amp really likes it if I am touching the positive lead on the inductor when the negative lead has been disconnected and it rewards me with the brightest LED response. It’s a challenge to my perseverance, and mostly my patience.

And school begins in one month. Two math classes, botany and the wicked wicked data structures class.

School’s Out.

But not for long.

Class begins again on August 16th.  That leaves me 11 weeks to replenish my bank account and attempt to enjoy some free time working on projects, especially that of Watching Machines.  It is not lost on me, though, how poverty stricken I am in terms of free time or meeting the tab that comes with the cost of living in San Francisco. Sometimes I feel like I can only keep an American Dream alive through a hybrid lifestyle of responsible planning and nihilism.

I have an F grade in Data Structures, which might color my enthusiasm. I had an A during my midterm, so one may wonder how this F came to be; I attribute it to internet rage. This was my only online course.

I found myself triaging classes, and having had an A for the midterm for this class, I wasn’t worried too much about missing a few homeworks, as long as I slam dunked the tests and the final exam. I found that this sometimes caused a professor to question my commitment to their class but I was always able to address this attitude with a moment of face time. In this course,  however, there was no such communication. This web silence came into play when I had to reschedule the final exam to the only viable exam period, his last available timeslot. I showed up 2 minutes late, (120 seconds!), and he wasn’t in his office. There was no final exam, no reschedule. Professor Metzler emailed me right after, ”Waiting until the last minute means you missed the opportunities. ” He assumed I was cooling my heels watching TV, or doing whatever, rather than juggling 5 classes, Watching Machines, and a part-time job when I scheduled his last time slot. That most of all, along with some not-quite-slam-dunked-lower-A-level-grade tests, and the spotty homework record, ruined that grade. 

CCSF will let me take the class over and it will not effect my GPA, though it will be on my transcript, so I opted for that choice rather than shake the bureaucratic tree and have an arbitrary C grade fall out.

What burns me the most, in a caustic way, is wondering if this another example of Boy’s Flunk, or if it is an example of Boy’s-Flunk- stereotype threat, or if it even matters what I think?

1. Apply nihilism.
2. Get on with life.
3. Repeat.

Two Weeks More

Not for the Maker Faire. I dropped out of San Mateo’s faire this month, stayed in for October in Austin. It’s next week anyway, not two weeks.

No, two weeks more before the end of finals, after which I can safely and responsibly be obsessive about hobbying.

I haven’t done a lick of work, since I had soldered longer leads to my dual op-amp. I haven’t even attached the now spider legged op-amp to the otherwise completed breadboard. Nope.

Just to make myself feel better about not having any self-directed projects the subjects by which my knowledge is increasing is:

1. Foxfire by Joyce Carol Oates – gritty feminist novel incidentally published at the height of the riot grrrls movement about a 1950’s girl gang.
2. Inductor math and Resisitor+Inductor math in circuits.
3. Abstract Expressionism
4. Trees and Graphs in data structures.
5. Just some algebra (my secret shame)

Sidebar: Free tip – whenever you have an Op-amp or IC you should have a capacitor nearby. Same goes for at the end of long wires (they act as an antenna). They are often not included in circuit diagrams because it is assumed you know they should be there.

SO-8 update (with Toaster Oven)

A day later I learn from a page on the Seattle Robotics Society’s web newsletter, Encoder, that I can in fact solder those tiny bug sized IC’s that left me itchy yesterday. In fact I can do it using a toaster oven and a special ordered compound! It looks like a fun experiment, but unfortunately at this point I need to limit the scope of my project, not expand it.

The result looks beautiful (second time I’ve used that adjective today, I know)!

I’ll keep this bookmarked for next time. 

Link:

• The HowTo

Too Beautiful

An artist named Niklas Roy created this beautiful object called Grafikdemo.

Notice how the green wire mesh teapot is slightly off screen? That’s because it’s not a visual display, it’s a real wire mesh teapot! Roy explains his process in an interview on  Gizmodo:

When I started to build it, it was funny to recognizebthat I did everything in the same way and order, like if I would have done it with a 3D modeling software. The lighting was also an experiment: I wanted to let the wireframe model glow, but I don't really like the look of UV light, because It always has this cheap disco touch. So, I've put a green gel (maybe the better word is filter?) behind the monitor glass, which blocks the UV light. The result was that you only see the green wires but no blacklight.  

How did he do such a damn nice job? There is a Youtube video but I can’t embed it in WordPress. My own website will be coming soon.

• Originally posted on Make,
• Interview and video on Gizmodo, 
• Artist’s website.

Tons of Mistakes – pt. 2

I have the cycles of the washing machine measured at last. I am ready to build a circuit.

I thought I would start with the easiest one first. All it does is light an LED when a load of almost any kind comes through the wire. The voltage just has to make it through resistor R5 (so you can set that as a threshold).

I have everything described in this circuit. I have the capacitor C1, and the resistors R1 – R5, I have the inductor L1, and I have the op amp IC1.

Only its not a very good kind of op amp. So listen up and learn from my continuing folly. There are things called “packages” that you need to pay attention to when you are purchasing your integrated circuits (IC’s).

The kind you do not want is called the small outline. There doesn’t seem to be a standard but somewhere in the package if you are lucky to see it are the description with the letters “SO” as in SO-8 or SOIC-8, SOP or probably innumerable others choices. The 8 I believe means 8-pin so it could just as well be SO-10. Whatever it is, it is fricking tiny! My blurry phone cam gives you a sense of dimension compared to a 9V battery. How would you like to try to solder that?

This is why I like Mouser for my source of electronics components. I have been to Jameco and a few other random companies but Mouser is the only one that lets you filter your search by package.

No. What you want is called DIP-8, it stands for Dual-In something I think.

So shop wisely my friend. Unless you have special equipment for suface mounting tiny IC’s, go DIP-8.

Wikipedia links:

• DIP-8
• SO-8

Tons of Mistakes – pt. 1

Forget about that claw I posted about earlier. It looks cool but I couldn’t find a multimeter to work with it. The first one I purchased for $10 that didn’t have a “range” indicated in the claw’s specs. as you know. I went to Discount Builders with the claw’s booklet. It says:

The 72-555 is designed to be used with digital multimeters that have an ACV input impedance >= 1.0 Megaohm and a 2 VAC(or more sensitive range).

I don’t know about the impedance. It’s like the AC version of “resistance in a DC circuit”. However I don’t know much at all about AC. They are worlds apart. AC is the current that is a sinosoidal wave where the current is flowing one direction on the positive peak and the other way on a negative peak, all within milliseconds. DC is more mellow and fits the water pipe analogies much more evenly.

An $80 multimeter at the store had a 2 VAC (Volts AC) setting though. I’m measuring current (amps) but what comes out of the claw is volts in a ratio to the current it hears rumbling in the wires. Great!

Not great because 2 VAC is the minimum sensitivity for the claw and the maximum sensitivity for the multimeter. The washing machine runs 9.8 amps. For 9.8 amps I need to read things in a 100mV range. That one twentieth of 2 V. And the purchase is nonrefundable.

I had a plain old $80 clamp ammeter sent to me yesterday morning via UPS. Which did the trick. This is a staged set up in the photo. I had set up the cord so I would only be reading one of the wires, positive or negative.

So here is what the washing machine is all about. When it is not running it varies between .00 and .01 amps. It was set for the 14 minute cycle on Cotton Sturdy, with a high water level and Cold/cold water temperature.

1. 1st cycle (fill basin) – .05 to .06 amps
2. 2nd cycle (wash) – first a spike up to 11 amps then 9.66 to 9.16 (manufacturer says 9.8 amp, so looks good)
3. 3rd cycle (drain/spin) – a drop to .02 amps and then back to the varying 9.x range though generally slightly lower than wash.
4. 4th cycle (spin) – a drop to .02 amps then back to 9.x
5. 5th cycle (refill) – a drop to .02 amps then up to .06
6. 6th cycle (rinse = fill and drain simultaneous) – a spike to 11 amps then 9.x
7. 7th cycle (drain only) – a spike to 16 amps(!) then 9.x
8. 8th cycle (spin) – a spike to 11 then to low 9.x and even 8.9
9. 9th cycle (reverse spin?) – a spike to 11 and then 9.x
10. 10th cycle (finish) – a drop to 2.x amps then finally to 0.00 amps

What seems strange looking at this right now is that sometimes when it is going from wash into drain it drops to 0.02, then later seemingly making the same transition (from rinse to spin) it spikes instead of drops.
Also what was interesting was I tried looking at the max amps using a special setting and for one of the spikes I got a reading of 32 amps! I think it’s an indication of the size of the wave. Chances are what the manufacturer and the measurement instrument are referring to when expressing the current involved is the average value of the half cycle. Average value of voltage “peak to peak”, from the positive peak to the negative, would always be zero. So an average of the absolute value of half a cycle what is known as voltage “root mean square” ( 0.707 times the peak voltage) will give you a meaningful number that describes everything. Voltage root mean square is the equivalent to DC voltage in producing heat in a resistor.

UPDATE: I’m learning about AC, and impedance, so it’s funny to look back on this.